Autopilot

"Bob Moore" wrote in message

You know John, our PanAm 727s were equipped with autothrottles,
and autoland even with just a single autopilot. They were still
restricted to CATII approach minimums but if you saw any of those
FAR 91.175 things, you could continue the autoland to touchdown.

Our 727s had no autothrottle. We only had a single autopilot, but certain
airplanes had autoland capability, autopilots with dual pitch channels, roll
monitors, and flare couplers, plus dual r/a, and several other redundancies.
In those a/c, we were good to CatIIIa when all was working properly and the
crew was qualified. Without 1 pitch channel, roll monitor, or flare
coupler, we were restricted to CatII. With no autothrottle, you'd wait for
the flare, triggered by RA, and manually reduce power. After touchdown,
disengage and steer manually.

One year there was a truckload of crappy weather across the southeast just
before Christmas. I flew 5 CatIII approaches in 3 days.